Lecture 5 - Attachment Theory Flashcards
Main themes in this lecture
What is Attachment/Historical Context
Strange Situation/Styles of Attachment
Influences on Attachment
Implications of Attachment
Attachment Through the Lifespan
What is attachment
An emotional bond with a specific person that endures across space and time
Seek closeness
Enable exploration of world
Management of arousal and emotions
History of attachment - Bowlby
1950s
AMSCI
- Attachment is adaptive
- The tendency to form one special type of attachment is monotropy
- Babies release social releasers that bring about an instinctive caregiving response. Explains how an attachment is formed
- Suggested their is a critical period for forming attachments 0-2.5 yrs of age
- Internal working model - it is believed the first primary attachment creates a type of schema for relationships known as the IWM.
Emotionally secure infants = emotionally secure, trusting and more socially confident adults.
Stages to his 1969 attachment theory
- Preattachment (birth – 6 weeks)
Baby’s innate signals (crying) attract the caregiver
Infant comforted by caregiver’s response - Attachment-in-the-making (6 weeks – 6-8 months)
Develops a sense of trust that caregiver will respond when signaled
– developing expectations
Infant responds preferentially to familiar people.
-Clear-cut attachment (6-8 months – 1 ½ years)
Infant actively seeks contact with caregivers
Mother becomes a “secure base”
Separation anxiety
- Reciprocal relationships (1 ½ - 2 years onward)
Increased understanding of parents’ feelings, goals, and motives
Better able to establish proximity to parents – working partnership
Separation anxiety reduces
Study of the types of attachment: Mary Ainsworth and the Strange Situation
Procedure: 100 middle class American mothers and their babies took part in a controlled observation. Each mother was observed with its mother in a specially arranged room with play materials as a series of prearranged activities took place.
- A stranger entering the room (response to stranger)
- A mother leaving the child alone and with the stranger (separation anxiety)
- The mother returning to the room (reunion)
Findings:
- 66% secure attachment
- 22% insecure - avoidant
- 12% insecure resistant
They later found a fourth group of insecure disorganised attachment - infants that lack any consistent pattern of attachment behaviour.
Conclusions:
- There are individual differences in the type of attachments that infants form
- The majority of American children are securely attached
- The mother’s behaviour is important in the type of attachment that the baby forms
What are the styles of attachment?
Secure attachment
Insecure attachment: Avoidant, resistant and disorganised
Say more about these styles of attachment
Secure (approx. 50-60% of infants*)
Leave mother’s side to play but will check back
Usually distressed by separation from mother
Happy to see mother on reunion
Allow themselves to be comforted and calmed
Mother is a ‘secure base’
Avoidant (approx. 15% of infants)
Tend to avoid mother in room. Fail to greet mother during reunion.
Ambivalent (approx. 9% of infants)
Clingy during initial play
Very distressed by mother’s absence
Shows some seeking of contact with mother on her return is
combined with resisting behaviours e.g. squirming during embrace
Disorganised (approx. 15% of infants)
No consistent way of coping
Confused and contradictory (e.g. fear when approaching mother;
switch from calm to anger)
May freeze
Caution notes on what the style of attachment is and what it is not
It is not a characteristic of the infant (i.e. being securely attached is not like being an extrovert or being timid)
It is a characteristic of a relationship between two
people
It is possible for an infant to have a different attachment
relationship with their mother compared to their father or other caregiver
Attachment figure does not need to be the mother
What are some trends regarding the style of the attachments shows and parental sensitivity?
Parental Sensitivity
Parents of securely attached
infants generally respond
warmly to their offspring and
are sensitive to their needs
Reading infant’s signals
accurately
Responding quickly
Showing warmth
Parents of insecurely attached infants show less evidence of parental sensitivity:
Parents of avoidant infants:
Indifferent and emotionally unavailable
Can reject infants’ attempts at closeness
Parents of ambivalent infants:
Inconsistent
Often highly anxious and overwhelmed by parenting
Parents of disorganised infants:
Can show abusive, frightening or disoriented behaviours
Less Sensitive Parenting
Cross cultural attachments
Question from Strange situation and Bowlby - are norms dependent on America? Are ways we measure attachment culturally significant?
Posanda et al 2016
- Columbian, Peruvian, Mexican and USA mothers (3-6 years) dyads studied
- Behaviours were measured in a natural setting (like home or park)
- Was not the strange situation
- Maternal sensitivity was significantly associated with child security in all 4 cultures
Genetic influences
There is also a genetic influence
Ukrainian pre schools either raised by their family or in an institution
Found that children raised in their family, affect of 5HTT (a particular variant of serotonin transporter gene) not that important. But it is protective for children raised in institutions (made them less likely to have disorganised attachments by having this variant).
Attachment is stronger on the nurture overall but there is a genetic role
Genetic influences
Some info supporting the internal working model: early attachments and long-term effects
Children who were securely attached as
infants:
* Seem to have closer, more harmonious relationships
with peers than do insecurely attached children
* Have positive peer and romantic relationships and
emotional health in adolescence
* Earn higher grades and are more involved in school
than insecurely attached children
Effects on later childhood development - Kerns et al
Kerns et al. (2007) found that 9-11 year olds who are securely
attached were more likely to:
Report positive mood
- Mood diary
Regulate their emotions using positive coping strategies
- “When my child is upset or has a problem, he/she:”
Talks about how he/she is feeling
Does something to solve the problem
Effects on childhood friendships
